Reaching Out to God When Pain OverwhelmsНамуна

“Power Flowing to Need Through Faith”

Scripture reading: Matthew 14:35-36; Mark 5:21-43; 2 Corinthians 4:7-18; James 1:2-12

Many biblical greats have endured excruciating physical and emotional pain. They offer us lessons to hold on to through our own journeys. In these devotionals we’ll be focusing on five biblical figures whose experiences can help us in our own pain. The first is the woman with the issue of blood.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all recount the story of the gentile woman from Caesarea who endured a disease that caused her to hemorrhage for twelve years. In her culture, women who bled were considered unclean and were ostracized. As I recall childhood bullying and ostracizing, my heart grieves for this woman and the pain she endured physically, emotionally from the shame and loneliness, relationally from her isolation, financially from her likely inability to work, and spiritually from her disqualification from participating in religious ceremonies and customs. Mark notes that nothing improved her situation, and it only worsened over time (Mark 5:26).

The woman’s community considered her a bruised reed—broken and worthless. Yet she demonstrated great faith. Her impurity as well as the sheer mass of the crowd made it virtually impossible for her to approach Jesus, yet she displayed great resolve and determination to reach the least-noticed aspect of his attire. Her painful desperation made her willing, and she received great reward for her faith-filled efforts. Jesus stopped on the way to another’s home, acknowledged that power had left him, and attended to the most rejected woman in the crowd.

Prior to her encounter with Jesus, she had exhausted all her resources without success, but an encounter with Jesus forever altered the trajectory of the rest of her life. We may not know the woman’s name, but we know her situation and her painful need, and Jesus ensured that we would know of her faith for the rest of time.

The lesson to us in our pain? Against all odds, despite what others say or how they believe, keep walking in faith, believing in God’s power to heal, while reaching for the hem of his garment. God is a rewarder of faith.

How would you describe the health of your faith today? Ask God for a renewal of faith in him.